


Breaking Fast

by indefinissable



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 5+1 Things, Blow Jobs, Developing Relationship, First Kiss, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, Lack of Communication, M/M, Sexual Dysfunction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-30
Updated: 2017-03-30
Packaged: 2018-10-13 02:08:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10504227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indefinissable/pseuds/indefinissable
Summary: After a few moments, Max pulls away from the kiss, releases Sam’s collar and steps back, giving him space.“Oh,” Sam says, still reeling a bit. “So, uh… was that a date?”Five times Sam doesn't stay over (and, of course, one time he does).





	

**Author's Note:**

> The existence of this fic is owed in large part to Jess ([themegalosaurus](http://archiveofourown.org/users/themegalosaurus/)), for being a patient and thorough beta, and for fuelling my Sam/Max obsession in the first place. Being aboard this tiny ship with her is a delight.

**i.**

It’s just before dawn and they’re fresh off a ghoul hunt outside Jackson, Louisiana. Sam and Max go for breakfast at a greasy diner down the road, just the two of them. Dean’s back in the room sleeping off a concussion and Alicia says she isn’t hungry; she’ll stay with Dean if they want to go eat, as long as they bring something back for her. Sam doesn’t particularly felt like eating at first—has plans, in fact, to shower as hot as he can stand it and then climb in bed to sleep for a year—but a knock on the door interrupts him, and the sight of Max leaning in the doorframe dirty and long-limbed, saying “Come on. I’m buying,” somehow manages to be more inviting.

They don’t talk much during breakfast, both of them bone-deep exhausted from the hunt. Sam is pretty sure there’s monster viscera clinging to his hair and the old injury in his shoulder is throbbing—he’d tweaked it swinging the machete full-force into a ghoul’s jugular. Across the table from him Max doesn’t look much better, dark shadows under his eyes, his hands shaking a bit from fatigue and leftover adrenaline. Still, Max cracks some joke about the way they must look, sitting in their booth covered in grime, that makes Sam laugh into his omelette, and the answering self-satisfied grin from Max is enough that some of the exhaustion starts to ebb by the time they stand stiffly and shuffle back to the car.

“Nice work today,” Sam says on the short drive back to the motel. “The spell that stopped the ghouls changing shape—I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

Max lights up at the praise. “You weren’t so bad yourself,” he says, glancing at Sam sidelong. “The way you used that machete was something else.”

The twins’ room is on the ground floor and Sam and Dean’s is upstairs. Sam gets to the bottom of the splintery wooden staircase and turns to say goodbye and that’s when Max leans in, gets a hand in Sam’s jacket collar and kisses him. His lips are dry and soft and warm, and he smells a bit like ghoul guts and the bag of grease-laden food he’s still holding in his free hand, bringing back for Alicia.

Sam reaches instinctively to steady himself against the staircase railing. This isn’t exactly a shock. They were sending semi-flirty texts back and forth even before Sam went to prison for six weeks. After Colorado, when Sam’s phone had finally flickered its way back to life, he’d found several messages from Max, increasingly concerned as time wore on without a response. Sam had spent several days agonizing over how to reply—over whether to respond at all after everything that had happened, the things that six weeks of isolation had done to his head—before his desire to get back some of the normalcy he’d lost had won out and he’d settled on _Hey. Sorry for being MIA. What have you been up to?_ He’d panicked then—Would Max even want to talk to him after all this time?—until his phone lit up with an incoming call and Max’s voice was rich with relief in his ear: “You sure know how to keep up the suspense. Shit, it’s good to hear from you.” Max had done most of the talking during the call, and Sam was grateful for it, still struggling to put full sentences together after going so long without speaking. Somehow, without pressing for details on where Sam had been, Max had seemed to understand, allowing Sam to mostly listen and soak in the human contact. When they hung up for the night Max had said, “Want me to call again tomorrow?” and before he had any time to feel guilty or like Max was offering out of pity, Sam had found himself saying, “Yeah. Please, yeah.”

That call had been the first of many since. So, yeah, Sam might have seen this coming. That doesn’t mean the reality of Max’s lips pressed firm and gentle to his is any less dizzying.

After a few moments, Max pulls away from the kiss, releases Sam’s collar and steps back, giving him space.

“Oh,” Sam says, still reeling a bit. “So, uh… was that a date?”

Max raises an eyebrow. “Guess that’s up to you. But Alicia would never turn down going for breakfast if she didn’t at least think I had a chance.”

Sam panics a little, instinctive old fear that he’s been transparent, his weaknesses exposed. Careless. “Um. Did she–?”

“We’re twins, Sam,” Max says easily. “She knows me. Besides, the way I’ve been mooning over you for months hasn’t exactly been subtle.”

Sam says, “Oh.” Gives it a moment, wondering what comes next. Max is still watching him. “Okay, yeah.” Then, because Max seems to be waiting for some sort of real answer, Sam reaches out to straighten his collar, brushing the underside of Max’s jaw with his knuckles.

That makes Max smile, slow and irresistible. A flash of immaculately white teeth before he presses his lips together, clearly trying to play it cool. “All right then,” he says, leaning in to kiss Sam again, just once. “See you in the morning, Winchester.”

He pulls back reluctantly and turns away toward his room. Sam watches him go, lips still buzzing with sensation. Then he shakes it off, steels himself to go back to his room and deal with a very irritable concussed Dean.

 

**ii.**

It’s late and the bunker is relatively quiet, the lamps in the library casting a sleepy orange glow. The four of them—Sam, Dean, Max, and Alicia—are sitting around one of the tables with a sketchpad and several lorebooks spread out in front of them. Max and Alicia, just off a shifter hunt in Oklahoma City, had called to see if they could crash for the night before heading home tomorrow. Dean had made ribs for dinner and then they’d all moved to the library for beers and an impromptu lesson in sigil modification.

Sam is sitting at one corner of the table next to Max, who’s talking animatedly about combining sigils to alter their effect. He’s gesturing with his hands a lot, and every time he shifts in his seat his knee bumps against Sam’s.

“So, for example,” he says. “Let’s say you have a Celtic sigil for ‘strength’”—here, in one fluid motion he scrawls a looping symbol on the page in front of them—“and you combine it with the triskelion, for growth”—he adds a triangle with three spirals flowing from its core—“you end up with a healing sigil.”

“But,” Alicia says, leaning in across the table, “if you merged it with, say, a shield knot instead, you’d have a very powerful protection sigil in your hands.”

Dean shifts up to get a better view of the sigils they’re sketching. “Cool. It’s like chemistry class.”

Alicia says, “It’s not an exact science.”

Max says, “It’s very old and complicated magic. But yeah, I guess that’s not a bad analogy.” He sets his pen down, shifts back in his seat so his thigh is touching Sam’s leg, warm and close.

Dean is impressed. “You should’ve gone into anthropology instead of biology. You could write lorebooks on this kind of thing.”

Max wrinkles his nose. “Nah. Old white dudes talking about stuff that happened hundreds of years ago isn’t really my style.”

It’s more than that. Sam knows by now, from late-night stakeouts in the woods waiting for monsters to turn up, and frustrated texts about his mom, and one marijuana-hazed conversation about destiny and free will, that Max has fought his whole life to have an identity separate from _witch_ and _hunter_ , to do something other than study lore and kill the things that go bump in the night. He doesn’t mind the hunting life but he doesn’t want it to be his whole life. It’s not as though Sam can’t relate, in a distant sort of way, to this man younger than him, brimming with dreams and idealism and individuality, all carefully marked-out and hard-won.

“I’ll drink to that,” Dean says, tipping the neck of his bottle in Max’s direction.

Max nudges Sam’s leg pointedly under the table, jolting him out of his head and back into the dimly-lit library. He smiles at Sam, though he seems tired, and he’s looking right at him when he says, “I’m beat. Think I’m gonna pack it in for the night. Mind showing me to my room?”

Alicia snorts loudly and Dean raises his eyebrows almost imperceptibly, then tilts his head back and finishes his beer in one long swallow. Sam sees Max roll his eyes at Alicia across the table at the same time as he frowns at Dean.

“Right,” Sam says, pushing his chair back and standing. “Dorms are this way.”

He leads Max out of the library and down the long hallways of the living quarters in silence, stopping at the linen storeroom to grab some blankets before heading for a room around the corner and down a long hallway of doors identical to his own. When he opens the door to the blank, unmade room, he keeps his eyes firmly away from Max.

“You can bunk here,” he says. “Washroom’s just around the corner there.” Max is looking around the room impassively. “I, uh. I can make up the bed if you want.”

Max shakes his head—“Nah, I can do it.”—and steps closer to Sam, close enough to take the blankets out of his arms and set them on the bed. Then he gets right up into Sam’s space, smooths his hands down Sam’s arms and says, “You’ve been quiet. Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Sam rushes to assure him. The truth is, he hasn’t been sleeping well since Colorado. When he was inside, time had all blurred together into the same endless stretch of blank nothing, even when he was asleep. But since they got out the old nightmares have come back in full force, Lucifer or Toni Bevell or waking up back in that cell with the white lights in his eyes all the time and the resounding quiet. More often than not he wakes up panicking, loses time before he comes back to himself on the floor of his room or in the washroom or wandering the halls restlessly, like a zombie, or a vengeful ghost. “Yeah, no, everything’s totally fine.”

“Because if this is–” Max says, pausing to choose his words. “If we’re overstepping here, you can tell me.”

Sam scrambles for something to say, but Max is so close and they’re alone together for the first time in weeks, and Max has been looking at him like that all night. So instead of saying anything, Sam kisses him.

Max hums an appreciative sound in his throat and opens up to it. They kiss for a while standing up like that, with Max’s hands on Sam’s shoulders and Sam cupping the back of Max’s neck, thumb stroking along his jawline. Then Max pushes him backward, just a little, inviting more than demanding, and Sam sits down on the edge of the bed and Max climbs into his lap and they’re properly making out, open-mouthed.

Sam’s hands find Max’s waist, stroke up just under the hem of his shirt, brushing the soft warm skin there, and Max makes a pleased noise. The sound of their mouths meeting echoes wet and dirty in the quiet little room, and Sam can feel that Max is hard in his jeans where he’s pressed all against Sam’s front. Max’s hands stay firmly above Sam’s waist, though, and he breaks the kiss after a while, chuckles a bit when Sam makes some dreamy sigh he’d never admit to in public.

“Mm, this is nice,” Max says, and tips his forehead against Sam’s. “Unfortunately I really do need to sleep now. I might actually kill Alicia if I have to be trapped in a car with her all day on no sleep.”

Sam says, “I know the feeling, trust me.”

Before they say goodnight Max kisses him again, close-mouthed and lingering, and Sam feels him there for hours, all through the long restless stretch of insomnia he spends staring unseeing at the dark ceiling in his room. When he does fall finally into an uneasy sleep, it’s barely any time at all before the nightmares have him gasping awake again. He gives up trying to sleep around four o’clock and goes back to the library to get some work done.

Max finds him a couple of hours later, brings him black coffee and toast with strawberry jam. He tips his chin down on Sam’s shoulder and says, “You look tired. Everything okay?”

“Mm,” Sam hums, tilts his head up, tucks his face into Max’s shoulder. He’s warm and smells nice. “Yeah, I’m fine. You sleep well?”

 

**iii.**

Sam and Dean head up to Sioux Falls for Jody’s fiftieth birthday. Under normal circumstances she wouldn’t be caught dead celebrating her own birthday, of course. As it is, a few well-off hunters she’d single-handedly rescued from a tight spot involving a nest of vampires a year or so back decided to honour the occasion by renting out a lodge in the woods for the whole weekend.

“I mean, it’s not like it was my idea,” Jody emphasizes when she calls to invite them. “But they were smart enough—or maybe stupid enough—to get an open bar and, well. You know me. I’ll show up for any excuse to get hammered.”

It turns out Jody’s a bit of a legend in the hunting world these days. She’s well known as the tough-as-nails sheriff who’ll work with you rather than getting in the way; who’s always willing to put you up for the night or cook you a meal or down several beers alongside you after a hard-won hunt. When Sam and Dean arrive they’re only a little surprised to find the lodge packed to the brim with hunters hailing from all around the Midwest and even Canada.

“I think most of them are just here for the booze,” Jody says after a few beers.

Sam puts his arm around her and tips his head on top of hers. Dean says, “Not us, though.”

She’s flustered, whacks Sam gently on the shoulder and says, “Christ, you Winchesters are getting sappy on me in your old age.”

Soon after that Sam sees Max and Alicia across the room and excuses himself to go say hello. It’s been over a month since they last saw each other, and Sam’s heart flip-flops uncomfortably in his chest when Max sees him across the room and flashes that thousand-watt smile in his direction.

“Hey,” he says when Sam gets close enough. “Fancy meeting you here.” He brushes his knuckles over the back of Sam’s hand.

“Small world,” Sam says, and can’t help but smile back. “Where’s Alicia?”

“Over there.” Max tilts his chin, holds Sam’s elbow so they can look together over at Alicia, who’s talking to a clean-cut young hunter with a scar bisecting one side of his face. “I’m watching for the cockblock signal, in case he’s an asshole and she wants out.”

Sam lifts his eyebrows. “‘Cockblock signal’?”

“I have one too,” Max says. He’s still holding Sam’s arm. “Might use it if you’re not careful.”

All of them end up getting pretty spectacularly drunk, sitting around the table trading hunting stories. Sam is right next to Max and their thighs are pressed together. At one point a giant cake is brought out and set in front of Jody to the tune of a gravelly and badly off-key rendition of “Happy Birthday”. She blows the candles out and abruptly shouts, “Okay. Party’s over. Everyone get the fuck out,” which sets off a round of fond laughter and several drunken toasts.

As the night goes on everyone gets progressively rowdier and more red-faced. Sam watches Dean amble over to two attractive women sitting together on a low couch, fights briefly through an internal conflict between his brother’s pride and his own amusement when Max leans over and whispers “They’re married. To each other,” into his ear. Dean returns to the table shortly thereafter, looking sheepish, and Sam only feels guilty for a little while before Dean spies some new conquest across the room and disappears entirely.

At some indeterminate time, Max drags Sam out of the lodge and down the hallway to a secluded emergency exit around the corner from the washrooms. They make out like teenagers there, Max backed up against the wall, hands roaming over Sam’s back and chest. Max tastes like the rum and cokes he’s been drinking, sweet and heady. He’s a few inches shorter than Sam, and he has to tilt his chin up to kiss him. Sam’s head is floaty and he can’t feel his face very well but it’s nice—he doesn’t feel so untethered like he sometimes does.

Then Max breaks away, says, “Come back to my room,” breathy and inviting, and Sam says, “Yeah. Yeah.”

Max leads him outside and up the stairs, stopping every now and again to back Sam into some dark corner, get his hands on him and kiss him again.

When Max fumbles open the door to his and Alicia’s room, he mutters an incantation and waves his hand over the doorknob. He pulls back and Sam sees it’s covered in a layer of fine frost. “The proverbial sock on the door,” Max says, and winks at him.

Inside the room, Max turns on the light and kisses Sam some more up against the inside of the door. He’s broad and firm, and when he lowers his mouth to suck at the juncture of Sam’s neck and shoulder, the wet heat and pressure makes Sam stutter out a weak moan.

They grind up against each other like that for a bit. Max is hard, rocking into Sam’s thigh, and Sam gets a hand on his ass, pulls him in closer to increase the friction.

“Missed you,” Max murmurs against his lips. He starts fumbling with Sam’s belt. “Can I– Is this okay?”

Sam doesn’t have to check to know he’s not hard at all. Even without the alcohol, Sam’s level of function below the waist has been temperamental at best since—well, since that basement in Missouri, at least (and he’d rather not go there right now), but really going all the way back to centuries spent in Lucifer’s cage. More recently, the six weeks of total isolation in Colorado hadn’t done any favours for the disconnect between his mind and body, and this is the first time his dick has come into consideration since then.

“Yeah,” Sam says, even as he pushes Max’s hands away from his zipper. He flips their positions then, pushes Max up against the door and kisses him again, gets his thigh angled so Max can grind on him. Then, before Max can question his hesitance, Sam undoes the fly of Max’s pants, pulls his cock out and strokes it a few times.

Sam says, “Wanna,” and Max moans, says, “Fuck yeah”—and then Sam’s lowering himself gracelessly to his knees and taking Max in his mouth. Max groans and his hands come up instinctively to Sam’s hair but he keeps his touch light, doesn’t grab on and it’s okay. It’s fine.

It’s been a while—okay, a really long time—since Sam’s done this, and it takes a minute for him to get his bearings. The taste is not bad, a little bitter, but the heavy weight of it filling his mouth, threatening to cut off his air supply, is a lot. Sam feels a bit unsteady, but Max hums in appreciation when he moves his mouth experimentally, says “Yeah, like that—Sam, God,” so Sam does it again, and again, and then he’s got a rhythm going.

Max isn’t loud like some of the women Sam has been with, mostly just heavy breathing and the occasional grunt when Sam does something he likes. After a while Sam brings his hand up to play with Max’s balls, then wraps it around the base of his cock, twists in a counter-rhythm to his mouth. Max likes that, one of his hands coming up to steady against Sam’s shoulder, gripping tight. Sam strokes up Max’s torso with his free hand, over his abs, under his shirt, feels the muscles there tensing and contracting.

Before long Max’s hips are stuttering forward and he says, a little strangled, “Sam. Gonna.” Sam pulls away then, finishes him off with his hand and looks up to watch Max come, head thrown back against the door, eyes squeezed shut tight as his cock twitches and spurts.

Sam licks Max and his own hand clean—a display of dirtiness with which Max is obviously pleasantly surprised—and tucks Max back into his boxer briefs, then stands, head spinning a bit from all the alcohol.

Max swipes his thumb in the corner of Sam’s lips, then leans in to kiss him despite where Sam’s mouth has just been. “Fuck, man.” He breathes out, slow and satisfied. “My turn. Let me.”

Then his hands are back at Sam’s pants and Sam is brought spinning back to the awareness that he’s still soft soft soft, and it has nothing to do with the alcohol. He wonders briefly what would happen if he let it keep going—whether Max would be disappointed by Sam’s inability to reciprocate, or just disgusted by his uncooperative (damaged, used) body.

He takes a step back, away. “I don’t think it’s much use. Whiskey dick.”

Max smiles warm and hazy, relenting easily enough. “Ah. Curse of old age.” Then he’s pulling away and stripping out of his pants and shirt, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Well, I’d say it’s definitely too late to rejoin the party at this point. Why don’t you crash here? Maybe we could try again later.”

The words are casual but measured, and there’s a note of guarded vulnerability in Max’s voice. Sam thinks of Dean, possibly still downstairs drinking or otherwise off somewhere fucking or fighting. Sam is pretty drunk, which sometimes helps block out the panic but also often makes it worse. The thought of what he might do or say, waking from a nightmare in this unfamiliar room—the naked ugly underbelly that he might expose to Max's watchful eye—is enough to make Sam shiver, suddenly cold and queasy.

“My brother,” he says, and it sounds weak in his own ears. “He’ll wonder where I am.”

“Right.” Max is still smiling, but it’s obvious from the way it’s frozen immobile on his face that he’s seen through the excuse. “Well, I’d walk you to the door, but–” He gestures at Sam, still standing fully clothed at the room’s entrance. “See you tomorrow, I guess.”

Sam fumbles his goodnights, then stands outside and takes several breaths of cold crisp air before heading back downstairs. He ends up walking in the woods alone for a while, fast enough that he’s breathing hard but he’s still cold to his bones. When he gets back to his and Dean’s empty room he climbs under the covers in his clothes, closes his eyes and wills the room to stop spinning.

In the morning over coffee Dean raises his eyebrows, says, “Nice hickey, Sam.”

Sam flips him off and goes to find Max so they can get breakfast together.

 

**iv.**

“So then,” Max says, voice tinny through Sam’s laptop speakers, “I’m thinking of transitioning into a case study of the disappearance of Diporeia from southern Lake Michigan, looking at environmental causes and how the impact resonates and throws the entire ecosystem into instability. But I’m not quite sure if I should put that before or after the chapter I just told you about. And I haven’t had much time to work through it between visiting my mom last weekend and this poltergeist case we’ve been on.”

It’s turned into a fairly regular thing between them, Sam listening to Max’s progress updates on his thesis over Skype, providing a sympathetic ear and a partner in insomnia. He’s tucked up in his favourite spot in the library and his motivation to work has slowly faded away listening to the soothing cadence of Max’s voice.

Sam clears his throat, shifts in his seat. “I could read it through for you if you’d like. I can’t say I know a lot about freshwater environmental biology, but I might be able to help you work through the structure.”

Even in the image on Sam’s laptop screen, Max’s grateful smile shines through. “Yeah, thanks. I’ll send it now so I don’t forget, but don’t feel like you have to read it tonight or anything.” He leans forward closer to the screen.

Sam hears the clacking of keys, then the ping of an email notification. “Got it,” he says, downloading the attachment.

Max sits back. “You look beat. What are you working on?”

Sam sighs, brought suddenly back to awareness of the masses of paper spread out in front of him. “I’m still trying to finish sorting through these Men of Letters’ dispatches and communications. These guys worked on a lot of stuff, and were horrible at organizing their paperwork. Hopefully something will come of it. I’ve already found references to at least eight other branches across the world. I just need to finish cataloguing before I can use it for anything.”

Max says, “What you need is a vacation, Sam.” He pauses for a moment, considering. Then: “We could think about going away somewhere for a few days? Or you could just come up here, though the fact I live with my sister probably isn’t much of a selling point.”

Sam hears himself say, “Hey, not like I have any room to comment on that,” but his mind has gone far away, to waking up in some sleepy cabin in the woods somewhere, just the two of them. Max, rolling over drowsy to smile at him, kiss him with sour morning breath. There wouldn’t be pressure to talk or move or do anything. Maybe later, after breakfast, they’d go walking in the woods, or fishing in the river, and they’d stay up late with the sky above them split wide into a kaleidoscope of stars. Then they’d go to bed and Max would want to touch him, and maybe Sam would let him, would bare his broken body to Max’s steady hands and mouth and feel unashamed.

The vision barely lasts a moment. Sam thinks of the way Dean always watches he and Max together a little warily, like Sam might up and jump ship on him any moment; “So you’re taking off again, huh? Could’ve seen that one coming.” Dean, alone in the bunker for days with no one to keep him out of his own head, keep him from drinking too much. Sam thinks about his own dysfunctional body and the nightmares that have him screaming himself awake and sweating through the sheets more nights than not.

The warm cabin in the woods evaporates as fast as it appeared.

Max, expectant, says, “Sam?”

Sam says, “Uh. Ah, I don’t. I’ve got so much work to do here, and Dean—I don’t think I have time.”

There’s a pause while Max rubs a hand down over his face. “Look, Sam,” he says, flat. “If this isn’t—You don’t have to make excuses. If you just want to be fuckbuddies—or hell, maybe not even that—that’s fine. Just tell me so I stop making an idiot out of myself here.”

That throws Sam. Sure, maybe he’s been a little too distant, but Max can’t possibly have gotten the impression, after the time they’ve spent together and all the conversations they’ve had, that all Sam wants is to fuck him. Then he remembers how Max had characterized his own skillset the night they’d met: _How to seduce men._ It had been a throwaway line, at once a joke and a come-on, testing the waters. At the time, Sam had barely thought anything of it.

“No!” Sam rushes to say. “God, that’s not it.” He needs to deny, explain, anything to erase the wry self-deprecating note from Max’s voice, ease the defensive set of his shoulders. “I just.”

For a moment, it all bubbles up just behind his teeth, a torrent of apologies and explanations, the things he’s never dared to speak out loud about himself. The taste on his tongue is bitter, overwhelming, and he gags on it. He’s ready to hand Max the keys to untangling the mess of his head, but the closer the words come the tighter the invisible band across his chest winds itself, compressing his lungs until he’s desperate for air and all he can choke out is—

“I can’t.” Can’t do the things Max needs him to do, can’t lay out the winding thorny labyrinth of his own mind for him by way of explanation. Would never put that burden on anyone, no matter the personal cost. “I can’t.”

Sam braces himself, waits for Max to say, “It’s done,” or “I don’t ever want to hear from you again.”

Instead, Max draws in a long breath, gathers himself together visibly through the screen. “Okay. I can tell you’re freaking out right now. It’s probably too late to be having this conversation anyway.” He rubs at his temples wearily. “I’m gonna go to bed now. Why don’t you take some time and then call me when you figure out what you want?”

Sam nods mutely, finds voice enough to say, “Max.”

“Get some sleep,” Max says, reaching forward toward the keyboard. “Night.”

The call disconnects and Sam is left looking at Max’s profile photo and the chat box from their text conversations. (Most recently, Max had sent Sam a grainy photo of himself shirtless in bed, then the message _You up?_ accompanied by a winking face emoji and an eggplant emoji. Sam had responded, _What do those mean_. During the ensuing Skype call, he’d dirty-talked Max through jerking off quick and hard, biting down on his palm so Alicia wouldn’t hear him from the next room. When Max had wiped his hand off on the sheets after—a habit Sam found revolting—he’d instructed Sam to “Take your pants off, old man.” Sam had feigned sleepiness but kept talking to Max until he’d fallen asleep, snoring softly on the other end of the call.)

Sam closes Skype quickly and throws himself with single-minded focus into the dispatches he’s organizing.

He’s still there when Dean stumbles in from the kitchen hours later, sleep-groggy and bearing two cups of coffee. Dean says, “Jesus, have you even slept?” He sighs when Sam shrugs in response, sets a coffee in front of him. “One of these days you’re gonna fall right over, Sammy.”

 

**v.**

Sam plunges his blade into the witch’s heart just as the curse hits him, a torrent of choking yellow smoke that pours into his mouth, seeps in through his ears and nose and presses heavy down, down, down into the deepest depths of him. He watches her crumple to the ground distantly, in slow motion. He can’t breathe.

After that, there’s an indeterminate period of time where all Sam’s awareness of the world is swallowed up in blinding, agonizing pain, in his chest and belly and under his ribs. All he can hear is crackling static. His vision narrows into a red haze.

When consciousness eventually returns he’s laid out in the backseat and the animal noises he’s making with every bump and sway of the car on the road sound warped and distorted in his own ears. He tastes copper, and when he raises a shaking hand to his face he finds he’s bleeding, mouth and eyes and nose, soaked in his hair and tacky on his skin.

Dean’s in the front seat, speaking quick and clipped and urgent into his phone. “It’s too late. She’s already dead. We’re half an hour out. Meet you there.” Then he catches Sam’s eye in the rear-view mirror and plasters on that reassuring big-brother grin that Sam knows means he’s truly terrified. “Hang in there, Sammy. Gonna get you patched up good as new in no time. Almost there. Just hang on.”

Dean keeps talking like that and Sam rolls his head against the seat, chokes on his own blood, which makes him cough. Then the pain devours the world again.

Next he’s shivering on the floor between two double beds with identical floral-patterned polyester coverlets. He’s laid out spread-eagle—and, he’s fairly certain, naked—on the carpet. Dean is kneeling over him, holding a blood-tipped knife above his chest. Sam can’t move.

Max is there too, standing above him with his arms stretched out, and his hands are glowing, his eyes are glowing. He’s speaking in a language Sam doesn’t understand—Gaelic, maybe. Whatever he’s saying, the thing inside Sam shutting his organs down doesn’t like it, and he can hear himself screaming, feels all the molecules of his body splitting apart like he’s a bomb about to explode in a shower of guts. Then all the jagged bits of him he’s worked so hard to keep inside will be spread out like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, ready to be dissected and analyzed and rearranged and he’ll be gone.

The screaming is loud. It goes on for a long time.

Then, finally, it’s quiet, and someone has covered Sam with a blanket. He’s cold, but the pain is gone, at least.

Max is next to him, kneeling like he’s keeping vigil. He looks exhausted. Sam tries to speak, but his throat is so dry it comes out as a stuttering cough.

Max starts at the sound, says, “Hey,” and “You’re okay. Don’t move. Don’t talk.” He brings a straw to Sam’s lips, supports the back of his neck with a warm, strong hand while Sam sips at the water.

They’re alone in the room. Sam feels wrung-out, utterly drained and numb. He couldn’t move if he wanted to. He finishes swallowing the water, then croaks, “I get these nightmares.”

“Shh,” Max brings his hand up to—what? Stroke Sam’s hair?

Sam grabs Max’s wrist—notices his own fingers are stained with blood. “Night terrors. Panic attacks.” He can’t get his voice above a whisper but it’s very important that Max listens, that Sam gets this out before feeling comes back into his body. “They make me… irrational. Lose control.”

Max strokes Sam’s bloody knuckles with his thumb. “You’ve been through more than most,” he says. “Even where hunters are concerned. A little trauma is to be expected.”

He says it like it’s that simple, reasonable. Sam says, “Happens almost every night. More than once, sometimes.”

There’s a flash of something in Max’s eyes and he makes a little noise. Understanding, maybe. All Sam’s guts laying out on the floor for him to inspect. “Alicia gets nightmares too,” he says. “Ever since we were kids. I’m the only one who’s ever been able to talk her down. It sucks seeing her like that, but it’s normal. I’m not afraid of it.”

Sam says, “Oh.” He looks past Max, up at the speckled ceiling. He’s holding Max’s hand, soft and warm. An anchor.

“Is that why you’ve been avoiding me?” Max says. “The nightmares?”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “There’s… other stuff, too. I—” And there it is, the lump in his throat that seals off his airway, prevents breath and inadvisable words from escaping, keeps it all trapped inside where he’s alone with it. The basement in Missouri. Lucifer, with his hand grasping at Sam’s insides, laughing at him.

“Hey,” Max says, thumb still on the ridge of Sam’s knuckles. “You don’t have to say anything. I just hope we haven’t done anything you didn’t want to do.”

“No,” Sam shakes his head as vehemently as he can manage. “Wanted it. Still do. Missed you.”

Max exhales long and slow, unwinding. “Yeah,” he says, voice a bit thick. “Me too.”

Sam closes his eyes and Max starts petting his hair with his free hand, just gently, which is really nice.

Sometime after that, Dean comes back into the room with coffee. He hands one to Max and claps him on the shoulder in what looks to Sam like a slightly stilted attempt at a brotherly gesture.

“Thanks,” Max says.

Dean says, “No problem.” Then: “Hey, Sammy. Good to have you back. Had us scared for a while there.”

“Where’re we?” Sam mumbles, suddenly hyperaware of the fact that he and Max are still holding hands.

“Just outside Cheyenne,” Dean says. He clears his throat, shifts his weight a little. “I called Max for help and this was where we met in the middle. He dropped everything and came right away.”

“It’s true,” Max says. “I’m very heroic, you know.”

Sam sighs. “Yeah, yeah.” He closes his eyes for a minute. Then a thought strikes him and he cracks them back open, looks up at Max. “Did you take my clothes off?”

“No,” Max says, amused. “I’m afraid your brother had that honour. Although I’m not opposed to the idea in the future—preferably when you’re not bleeding out of your eyes.”

“Mm,” Sam says. “Okay.”

Dean makes some affronted snorting sound. “Aw, man. Conversations I did not need to hear my brother have.” There’s warmth and relief in his voice though, so Sam knows he’s not really upset.

Eventually they get Sam up off the ground and Dean helps him into some soft clothes and under the covers. Sam’s fading fast again, and Max sits next to him on the bed, says, “Call if you need anything. I’ll be right next door.”

“You can stay,” Sam says. “I won’t freak out again. Promise.”

“Sleep,” Max says, adjusting the covers around Sam. “There’s plenty of time later for everything else.”

Just before unconsciousness swallows him up, Sam feels the cool brush of Max’s fingers over his forehead, soothing through his hair. He thinks he hears Max whisper something—a spell, or a prayer, or some word of comfort that sends him sinking into a dreamless sleep.

When he wakes up, Max touches up the healing sigil he’d drawn on Sam’s chest and spoon-feeds him oatmeal. “I should have known what I was getting into, dating an older man,” he says, shaking his head.

“You millennials are always complaining,” Sam says, and sighs deeply as Max wipes some stray oatmeal from his chin.

 

**i.**

Sam jerks awake in a fog of panic. It’s pitch dark and the need to _get out now_ is clawing at his chest, pressing heavy in his lungs but he doesn’t know where the doors are and he can’t breathe again, he’s trapped in some cage or basement or cell and he’s suffocating—

Somewhere, a light clicks on, hazy yellow-orange and too bright. Someone says, “Sam.” Sam jerks away from the voice, and from the hands that follow, reaching out to him. The voice says, “Okay. I’ll stay over here.”

It’s Max. He’s in Max’s room, curled up on the floor in the corner because he woke up and couldn’t find the door. He and Max fell asleep together here last night after they watched a movie and fooled around, careful because Max dislocated his shoulder taking down a werewolf last week. Now Sam isn’t wearing any clothes, and he’s on the floor.

“Fuck,” Sam says, shaky. He rubs at his chest, still tight. “Shit.”

“You’re safe,” Max says from somewhere across the room, near the bed. “It’s just after three in the morning, and you’re at my place, in Rapid City. You’re okay.”

Sam nods, blinking, the heel of his hand dug hard into his sternum. He can see, now, the space around him resolving from the airless, nightmarish cage of his invention into Max’s warmly lit, dishevelled room. Max is on the floor too, kneeling opposite Sam a few feet away, at the same level but giving him space. He’s looking at Sam, focused and careful but not afraid or repulsed. Not disgusted by Sam’s outburst.

“You’re safe,” he repeats, voice steady and even.

“Okay,” Sam says. He uncurls, still shivery with adrenaline, sits with his back against the wall. Runs his fingers through his sweat-soaked hair. “Yeah, okay.”

“Good,” Max says. “Can I come closer?” Then, before Sam can respond: “Don’t say yes just because you think it’s what I want.”

Sam thinks about it for a minute. The last person to be so close to him after a nightmare was Amelia. She used to stroke his hair and sometimes he’d put his head in her lap. He isn’t sure he’d like his hair touched right now, but Max looks solid, real. More so than the apparitions that grasp at him when he sleeps.

“Yes,” Sam says.

Max shuffles closer, sits shoulder-to-shoulder against the wall with him. Still not touching, but close enough that Sam could lean his head on Max’s shoulder if he wanted. Close enough that he can feel Max’s body heat, still sleep-warm. He sets his breathing in time with Max’s, slow and even.

“Wanna talk about it?” Max says. He’s not looking at Sam but facing outward, mirroring his posture.

“Nah,” Sam says, shaking his head. “Tell me something good.”

Max hums thoughtfully. “There’s a species of freshwater fish in Africa with bumps on its forehead,” he says. “When two fish want to mate they rub their heads together and the bumps swell up. It’s called the Humphead Cichlid.”

“‘Humphead,’” Sam echoes. He shifts his hand over on the floor until it bumps against Max’s. “Tell me another one.”

Max waits for a second, giving Sam time to draw back, then hooks his fingertips over Sam’s, just gently. “There’s a new breakfast place down the street I’ve been wanting to try. They bake their own bread and it always smells amazing from outside.”

Sam lets himself imagine it. “Sounds like a good place for a date.”

**Author's Note:**

> I don't foresee this fic getting a lot of attention, but I'm really very fond of it, and I'd love to know what you think! Comments and kudos are loved and appreciated eternally.


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